Gordon Strand: [0:08] I should maybe shut that door. OK, today is October the 10th, 2010. We are conducting an interview at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle of Ray and Eric Olsen, father and son, for the Nordic American Voices Project sponsored by the Nordic Heritage Museum.

[0:33] And first, if you could each identify yourself by name and where you live.

Ray Olsen: [0:42] Ray Olsen, I live in Seattle, 3254 Northwest Esplanade and...

Eric Olsen: [0:51] I'm Eric Olsen, Ray's son, and I live in Seattle also in the North Beach area.

Gordon: [0:58] So, Ray, could you give us some background of your Nordic history, where your parents came from and as much as you know about their story of coming to the United States, and why they left, and what it was like for them, and where they went?

Ray: [1:14] OK. Well, my mother was born in Aalesund, and her father had a store in Aalesund. And then they had also a place out in the country that they went that was called Hatlen.

[1:33] Anyway, my grandfather, he had a skiff and they were going out for subsistence fishing. He was out there. He just went out to get some fish and he cut his hand and he died in a week of blood poisoning. So that left my grandmother with five children and no way to make a living. But she had relatives, her brother in Petersburg and they sponsored to send for her.

[2:20] My grandmother came first and they were in poverty. I don't know if she could only take two children. She took two children with her. That's all she figured she could afford to take. And then all she did was keep house. She didn't make much money working in canneries and what not in Petersburg.

Gordon: [2:44] What year was that that she immigrated?

Ray: [2:47] I'm just guessing but I think it was around 1923. Then she sent for the others. My mother and another one came and later on another one, two came. It was just one she took to begin with, I guess.

[3:05] Anyway, then my mother, she got married at 18. She doesn't talk about it but I just wondered if they did that back then, other people took them in where they worked for their living and did chores and stuff like that. I kind of think that's what it was. So they were very anxious to come to the United States.

[3:30] And anyway, she married at 18 and then I was born, 1927.

Gordon: [3:37] Up in Alaska.

Ray: [3:38] Yeah, in Petersburg. And then my father and dad, they got divorced after I think I was two or three. And my mother remarried and moved to Juneau. And then my dad remarried and then we'd go down and visit him in the summer times and stuff like that.

[4:12] My grandmother, then she opened up a boarding house in Juneau. She did very well, that boarding house. She did pretty good and had a couple houses and all that at the end. And then my dad, he was born in Molde. It was actually a farm way up at the head of Molde where he was raised, and we have records that go way back to the 1800s, way back. He was born in 1884. And he was 42 when I was born so he was a lot older than my mother.

[4:57] Anyway, he fished halibut and he logged and he did things like that all his life right in Petersburg mostly. When he first came over though he went to Seattle. He went to La Conner and he logged. And then a tree fell on his face really bad so he quit logging. They actually shipped out a transient thing down here in Seattle and they shipped out for jobs to go to Alaska.

One year he got a job with the railroad. They were building a railroad in [indecipherable 05: [5:30] 37] right out of Cordova to a coal mine or something. Then there was another company that they were building the same railroad and the one that got the railroad in first got the contract. He said they were fighting with each other, the labor crews, and he said it was a real mess.

Gordon: [5:58] You mean there were two sets of tracks?

Ray: [5:59] Yeah, two sets of tracks. Can you believe that? [laughs] Anyway, that was one job one year. Then he worked in the AJ mine in Juneau in 1906. And then he went fishing. He didn't talk about it too much but he did run seine boats. It was a cannery-owned seine boat, he did run that for quite a while. And then he fished halibut as more stable income, and he fished halibut all his life.

[6:36] Actually he fished until he was 77. He retired at 65 for one year and then a boat came over and asked if he could go seining for a week or two. So he went and he did OK and then he figured, well I can still do this. And then they wanted him to go halibut fishing the next year so he did and he fished till he was 77. They had to run him in because his legs started swelling up. They had to cut his boots off, and then he couldn't; circulation I guess for his age.

[7:13] But anyway, he lived until 86... he was 86 when he died; he died in 1973. He would come down and in the end there his wife died. So he was alone. And when I left Petersburg... OK, actually I better go back here. Actually, then I'd gotten married and then I was drafted in the army and I went up to Fort Richardson.

Gordon: [7:50] What year was that?

Ray: [7:52] 1950. And then I got my wife and she came up there and stayed with me. So we go out of Fort Richardson, but that was the second time I was drafted. I was drafted first in 1946 right after the war. The last ones to go and I stayed there 1947, they demobilized went back to Juneau.

[8:22] I fished for three years on the Fremont - halibut - because I already had some experience because when I went to live with my dad when I was 15 and a freshman in high school. Anyway my uncle had a boat and couldn't get a crew. I went up to him and asked him if I could go out with him since he couldn't get anybody.

He kind of laughed at me. You know, 15 years old, but he couldn't get anybody so he took me. We went on maybe one trip. In the meantime, my dad was fishing on his [indecipherable 09: [8:55] 21] ; this is for black cod not halibut and they came in and the cook on their boat quit so they were short a man.

[9:19] So then I had a little experience, I had one trip in. I went for three more trips that year with them in high school there and then I got sick. As a sophomore, I got sick. I had tuberculosis.

[9:38] They sent me down to Seattle. I went to a sanitarium as a rest cure for three months. Then I was over it, but I lost a year of school. At the time my mother was living in Seattle so then she remarried and they sent me to Hill Military Academy, I remember, down in Portland, Oregon. I hated it. [laughter]

Georgia: [10:02] How did you get to go to a military academy? Were you a...

Ray: [10:05] I don't know why sent me. I guess it's good. It keeps you in line, you know. I don't know but that's what they did.

Gordon: [10:14] Yeah.

Ray: [10:14] I guess my dad, he paid for it. But anyway, see, I was pretty young, 17 when I went down there and then I asked my mother. I wanted to join the Merchant Marine. She signed off so that I got to do that.

[10:34] So I left there and went down to Catalina Island and went to basic training down there. Gosh I always got the thought, I'll join this and I'll work up and be a skipper of one of these ships and stuff like that. But I didn't qualify on account of my eyes.

[10:54] I said, "How about the engine compartment?"

"No your eyes are too bad for that, too." So that didn't leave me any options. So I was real disappointed. But then one night they came and said... I'd applied for radio operator, but I didn't have the education all these [indecipherable 11;10] college graduates and everything there applying for it. But my golly they came and called me at 3: [10:56] 00 one morning and said get your stuff together.

[11:21] You're an alternate, you get to go. The other guy can't go, so you can go. So I went and took the train to New York City, and went off to Hoffman Island and went to radio school for six months. And then I actually went back to San Francisco and shipped out on a ship.

[11:39] I went to Okinawa and the Philippines. We left from San Francisco and came back to Seattle. It was right after the war. They didn't know what to do with our cargo because they had a big typhoon in Okinawa and there were 56 ships that were sunk. In Okinawa, all the army was living in tents and everything.

[12:09] I'm getting away from fishing now I don't know if that's all right.

Gordon: [12:12] That's all right. [laughter]

Gordon: [12:13] This is your story.

Ray: [12:17] Anyway, after three months they sent us down to the Philippines to get rid of the cargo. But then they went down there and then they changed their mind and they sent us all the way back to Seattle, with the cargo.

[12:29] So I was gone for six‑seven months there on that trip. And then I made one more to go on a boat for a month. We went over to Yokohama to pick up troops and nurses and bring them back, 1700 of them. That was the end of that.

[12:52] It started to slack up, so I couldn't ship out anymore. It dropped really fast. So I went back to Juneau. Thought I'd finish high school. I was 19. I enrolled in high school and then I got drafted... again... no for the first time. So I got drafted and I didn't go. I was in from October until June, and they demobilized so I got let out. Then I went to fishing.

[13:31] Since I'd had this experience, I was in Juneau and I went down and was on several boats. I got on the best boat there, the big money maker, the Fremont. That was good. I stayed there for three years. And then...

Gordon: [13:51] What was special about the Fremont? Why...?

Ray: [13:53] Well, the Fremont... you want to get on a boat that makes more money and he was a high liner.

Georgia: [13:59] So they even called them high liners in those days huh?

Ray: [14:01] Yeah, that's what they called them. So they were short a man so I got on there. Anyway, we fished. Actually, we didn't go west. We fished around southeast Alaska. Then in the summertime when area two was over, he would go out a little bit to fish it but he wouldn't far off Cape Spencer for stuff.

[14:25] And then when that was over, area three, we'd go up and fish black cod in the Shadow Straights and also outside of Shadow Straights on the outside. He had a very small boat. That's when I did that for three years.

[14:42] Then, I got drafted again.

Gordon: [14:46] They had your number, didn't they?

Ray: [14:47] Yeah. [laughs]

[14:49] So anyway, it was two years then in Fort Richardson. By then, we had Christine and we had a child then. Right. We went to Petersburg and I fished that summer. Then we went south. I hadn't even met her parents yet, so we went down to southern California and stayed down there.

[15:16] Then I stayed down and went to college. I decided I wanted to go and get an education. First of all, I was hired by the post office there for awhile, and then I went college. I took up TV repair. I was going to do stuff. I could see they weren't making any money so I switched to refrigeration.

[15:45] I'm not mechanically minded at all and it didn't agree with me. So then, I said, "Let's go back to Petersburg and I'll go fishing." [laughs]

Georgia: [15:54] How did you meet your wife?

Ray: [15:57] I met her in Juneau. She was working at an ice cream parlor called Percy's. Her and two other girls, three other girls, they decided that they would travel to Alaska and go on a trip to Alaska. They got together. Just had enough money to make it to Juneau so they went up there and they all got jobs.

[16:25] Then they stayed there. This was in '47, I met her for the first time. And then they went from there to all over. They went up to Denali and Fairbanks. They made a big trip out of it. Then they went down. Then she came back in 1950 and that's when we got married, when I was in the summer tagger.

[16:52] So anyway, I got drafted and went to Juneau. I got a trailer. I could go off post and... so, I got a trailer right outside of Fort Richardson there. I was stationed there for two years so it worked out fine, really.

[17:08] And then, Christine was born. So, I went back to Petersburg. I went fishing. Then I went down to college and then I come back up again. That was after, so I came back to Petersburg in '54. Yeah. Then I got a job on a halibut boat and we were in a house there and I went out on it.

[17:43] We went fishing and it was the worst price year they ever had since way back in the 1930's, I think.

Gordon: [17:51] What year was that?

Ray: [17:52] 1955 it was. I said '54 but it was '55. It was 12 and seven we got for halibut, 12 cents for the large and ...

Gordon: [18:02] Yeah, 12 and seven huh?

Ray: [18:04] Yeah. I got so disappointed. Then area two was over and then I was downtown. This Fred Nelson, he was the manager of the Standard Oil Company, he comes out, "What do you do back up here?"

[18:19] I said, "Well, I was going to come up and go fishing." I was thinking I was going to make some money and then I'd buy a boat so I could get up and make a little more money. He says, "This fella who works for me, he just died and I need another man out there. But I want you to promise me you don't go fishing the next year or two."

[18:42] I said, "OK." Boy, I was glad of that because the only thing I could do was the salmon season and there was supposed to be a real poor year for salmon. You know, I had children then. By this time, David was born and Eric, three kids, so I had to make some money.

[19:02] So, I stayed there. It was a good, steady job. I would never go any further and I was just making enough to get by. There wasn't any extra money or anything. Then you know, you've got to get them.

[19:18] I stayed there and my wife she didn't like all the rain and stuff in southeastern Alaska with the kids. She said, "We'll be better off if we go to Seattle. They get more opportunities and stuff like that." So, I come down to Seattle.

[19:33] I'd never fished on that sea. I fished one year. I went back to Petersburg but fished on another boat, the Unimac. The same Unimac your dad had.

Georgia: [19:43] I was wondering if it was the same Unimac.

Ray: [19:48] We did all right but I was gone too long up there. I decided to get on a Seattle boat. So I shipped out the next year on a Seattle boat.

Gordon: [20:01] Which...? [overlapping discussion]

Ray: [20:02] The Masonic, I think. I was there for a couple of years.

[20:13] Then I went around looking for winter jobs. I had to make money so I got a job driving an oil truck. That was lucky with that. So, I was working in the winter times.

[20:28] I got to Seattle in 1965. I was there for two years. Then I got on the Lorelei 2nd. I was always thinking about getting a boat. I was talking about getting all the time but I never had any money and I didn't know it.

[20:51] I finally in 1969, the price wasn't so bad and I just went and bought this Leviathan. I bought half of it. There were three owners. It was from Tacoma. Two of the owners didn't go. One guy wanted to stay, then I didn't have to put so much money down either. I got in pretty cheap.

[21:21] We went but the boat was a mess. It hadn't been taken very good care of. That's why it was so cheap.

Gordon: [21:27] You know when it was built? Where it was built?

Ray: [21:29] It was built in 1925 and it was built, I really don't know. I got it at home but I forgot now.

Gordon: [21:42] In Seattle or...

Ray: [21:42] This area, Seattle or Tacoma. Because they actually came from Tacoma, the previous owners.

Gordon: [21:49] Who were they?

Ray: [21:51] One of them was called Matts.

Eric: [21:55] Alf and Egil Hanson.

Ray: [21:57] Yeah.

Eric: [21:59] It was Alf Ness who went fishing with us.

Ray: [22:01] Yeah, right.

Eric: [22:02] Does he still fish with you? And then Egil Hanson had a hold of it, right?

Ray: [22:07] Engle Hanson, right. He ran it.

Eric: [22:09] Oh, he just ran it?

Ray: [22:10] He just ran it. It was these three owners. I remember one of them, he was a veteran. So of course, I didn't see him. The other one, I never saw either.

[22:20] This Matts. Anyway, I did see Matts when I was going to buy the boat. That was one year. Then, I bought the other half. He wanted to sell out of the other owner. So then, I thought it was mine. I put down a little money.

[22:40] But then, I went fishing and actually, Eric went with me.

Eric: [22:47] I was still in high school. I was a sophomore in high school.

Gordon: [22:50] When you bought the boat.

Eric: [22:51] So, I didn't go right away but I came down and helped you with the Spring painting and stuff. Then, he went fishing for a couple of trips in the spring. I went up after I got out of high school and fished that summer with him, his first year that he had the boat.

Gordon: [23:03] Little Wyatt.

Eric: [23:05] That was right. But I've fished a year before also.

Gordon: [23:08] How big a boat was it? Can you describe it?

Ray: [23:11] She was 56 feet long. No, 60...

Eric: [23:20] I think it was 63 or 62.

Ray: [23:24] Yeah. 61, I think it was. 61 feet but it had a narrow beam. She was only, I forget, 13 feet wide I think.

Eric: [23:33] 13 and a half, I think about.

Ray: [23:34] She packed about 56, 000 with everything loaded.

Gordon: [23:41] So, it was a schooner then or not?

Ray: [23:43] No.

Gordon: [23:43] It was not, OK.

Ray: [23:46] It was wooden, the same type as the cabin forward. It wasn't a schooner. [overlapping discussion]

Eric: [23:51] Cabin forward. Yeah.

Ray: [23:55] Then, I fished. The boat was real run down, I remember. I had to go borrow a lot of money. I wish I didn't have. I went to the shipyard and they had to do all this stuff to it but they were very good. They said, "You pay us when you get it."

[24:18] That's the way it was back then. There was no interest, or other money, or anything.

Gordon: [24:23] You're talking about the Fisherman's Terminal in the shipyard or somewhere else?

Ray: [24:25] It was at Sagstad actually.

Gordon: [24:27] Sagstad, OK.

Ray: [24:29] Also, Pacific Fisherman later on. I had another big thing there. They were the same way. They just did that. They went to get the customers because they knew you would make it eventually. You know?

[24:40] Anyway. The prices weren't too good either. It was pretty bad. We didn't make a lot of money. Do you remember what the prices were back then?

Eric: [24:51] When I first started in 1969, the prices I think had gone up a little that year. You guys bragged saying, "That was the highest prices had ever gone up in Alaska." They sold up in Alaska. They almost always used to take their loads and run in to Seattle because you got a better price in Seattle.

[25:09] The first trip I went on in 1969, when my dad was a crew member and I went for the trip. The price was 39 cents in Kodiak and they were really happy about that. Then the next year when my dad bought the boat in 1970, they dropped down to 30 cents. I think 30 cents per halibut and that was, we were a little disappointed. Still, that was good enough to make a pretty steady income.

Ray: [25:34] Yeah, that's right.

Gordon: [25:36] What drives the price of halibut one way or the other what...?

Eric: [25:39] That's a good question. We all know about supply and demand. That's probably number one. As far as trying to figure out exactly what drives it, it's pretty difficult. But there's been good prices recently because there's fresh fish coming in all the time.

Ray: [25:55] It was very difficult to catch fish then because of the 200 mile limit they had. If you didn't utilize your fishery, then the foreigners could come in and fish it. The Russians had a lot of them. They come up and they just had a lot of these draggers. They wiped out the perch, wasn't it?

[26:21] They weren't supposed to take the halibut but they were dragging on the bottom so they were getting a lot of halibut. They dropped.. like area two. I think it dropped down to 12 million pounds, was it?

[26:43] We had to make these real long trips, 18 to 20 days for a trip to come in. So it was real very poor fishing. They had really strict regulations because they dropped all the quotas and everything like that.

[27:02] I think it was 1976 or something like that, we caught some fish over there in Brooke Inlet. We came in and we had a pretty good trip and the price had gone up. I think it was 79 cents or something. It was like a fortune at that time. We had a big trip with the fishing.

[27:33] Most of the people weren't bringing in full loads and everything like that even after that. So anyway things started to change after that. It didn't get up really high until we came one year and it came up to over $2.

Eric: [27:50] That was 1979.

Ray: [27:52] In 1979, it got up to $2. Then we started making money. The fishing had started getting better. So then...

Gordon: [28:05] Why do you think that was? Was the conservation was working?

Eric: [28:09] Well, yes. We always had quotas in halibut fishing, at least since 1923, when the Halibut Commission was formed. And so it has been, it was a well‑managed fishery, but ... it's always been a good fishery, but in the ... my dad was talking about in the 60's and 70's, there was a lot of foreign trawling going on out there, and we don't know exactly how that caused the halibut to decline so much, but it was very difficult to catch fish in the early 70's, about when about I was starting.

[28:40] Like my dad said, the season would be open for seven or eight months, and still the quota wouldn't even be caught with all the boats fishing. There was a certain quota that we were allowed to catch, but it would even get reached. Maybe in Novembers, there would be few boats left out there, and everybody quit because of the weather.

Ray: [28:56] And then the price was so bad, so a lot of the boats went tuna fishing and got out of it. So that extended the season. There wasn't tuna, seiners were gone, too, so there wasn't many halibut boats up there.

Eric: [29:09] But the thing about the lack of halibut in the 70's, is kind of a mystery even to the Halibut Commission. But some of those fish were still out there, we were just unable to catch them, because when the fishing started getting better, and you might even remember it, Georgia, that in the 80's, late 70's and 80's, the quota started raising, and the fishing got much better and we were able to load boats in a lot quicker time.

Georgia: [29:35] There was still big fish ...

Eric: [29:35] But, there was a lot of very large fish, and they were ... at the size they were, they had to be at least 20, 25, 30 years old. So they were there, but the Halibut Commission thinks they don't know exactly what happened, but they may be one off somewhere in the deep, where they just weren't biting the hooks, and it might have had something to do with the trawlers. Because it did coincide with the heaviest trawl activity. But, there's a lot of these things that they have theories on why it was, but they don't know for sure. Because those ... It was very good fishing throughout the 80's, on fish that were around back in the ...

Gordon: [30:12] Explain this quota system. Just remember, you're going to be speaking of actually to people who know nothing about it. How that worked when it started, I know it's changed also, probably a lot, quota system.

Eric: [30:23] Oh, yeah, it's changed over the years. Yes, well, it started to get very good fishing. Instead of fishing for long periods of time, it was getting to be shorter. And then they started to catch the quota real fast. Since the price was going up, everybody wanted to get in there. So a lot of talk about this IFQ's going in and everything like that, so everybody wanted to get in to make sure that they could qualify for that. So they had ...

Gordon: [30:58] To qualify, you had to have a certain amount?

Ray: [31:01] Yes. They had this system that was the best five years out of seven. Wasn't it?

Eric: [31:11] Yeah.

Ray: [31:12] They averaged out what you caught in those years.

Gordon: [31:15] And that's per boat. So a quota is assigned to a boat.

Eric: [31:21] Well, the way it was before, was a quota ... the quotas I was talking about, did you want to start from the beginning? You want me to explain that part?

Gordon: [31:33] Yes, sir.

Eric: [31:36] OK. So we have the International Pacific Halibut Commission manages the Halibut Fishery. And it's an international fishery. They managed both Canada and the U.S. And they send out scientists and they have charters with them, and they get as much data as they can from the charters, and from log books that we fill out. And they come to get our log book information from us each year, we kept log books, and they also would come to the docks when we unloaded fish, and get cut out the [indecipherable 32:13] from the ear, because there's rings on the [indecipherable 32:15] similar to a tree, so they could tell the age of the fish.

[32:19] And they got all kinds of that sort of information, and with that information, based on catch per unit effort of the fishermen and their scientific data and charters that they do, they also go out and do charters, and set some areas and have their own information. They'd set quotas based on that, and they'd always try to be fairly conservative. They'd let fishermen have input into it, but basically they'd listen to their scientific staff and the commissioners. And then, every year, we were allowed to catch a certain amount of quota. Now, there's different areas in Alaska, also. There's the southeast, there's central and Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea, Aleutian, so it's divided up into I think five separate areas, and plus the Canadian.

Ray: [33:06] Where each one had a separate ...

Eric: [33:08] Each one had a ... there's an overall quota, but each area had their own separate quota within that overall quota. Basically it was pretty well managed, for years and years, and it's always been in good shape. But, like when I was talking about the 70's, when I used to go out on 18, 19 day trips, it got to be where all the boats would go out at once, the season would open, and maybe April 1, or something like that. And all the boats would go out at once and it would be a big fight for fish. Race for fish.

[33:42] But at that time, back in the 60's and 70's, there wasn't as much of a hurry because you didn't even hardly catch the quota anyway, even if you put all year in. But, we used to fish 18 or as many days as we wanted to, 19 days, which you couldn't get away with any more, because fish are pretty old. But we did, back then, it was a little different, and we had refrigeration in the holds. We were forced to ... we weren't forced, it was voluntary, but pretty much a gentlemen's agreement that we understood amongst the fleet. You'd have to take an eight day break after each trip.

[34:17] And that's one reason the guys would fish really long trips. Because they'd figure well I'll get as many days as I can, and then we can take our eight days. And that was eight days from the day you came in and sold, until the day that you left. Noon, the day you sold, until noon the day you left. Eight days. So we'd try to fly home, to see our families and go home. And then we'd get five and a half days at home. I remember that, by the time we unloaded.

Gordon: [34:41] So you sold up in Alaska.

Eric: [34:43] We sold during the time that ... I'm talking about from the late 60's, '69 on, most of the trips were sold up in Alaska. Before that, it was a little different, because they used to run trips down to Seattle to get a better price.

Ray: [34:56] That's right.

Eric: [34:57] But then, the fishing was poor, so we had long seasons. But then, in around the late 70's, when the fishing started getting better, then the season started getting shorter. We actually would catch the quotas by around September. And then it was August. And then more boats started getting into it, because the price started going up in the late 70's and early 80's, and some of the guys that fished salmon and other fisheries, that didn't want to longline decided, "Well, I think I need to."

[35:30] So then other fisherman started gearing up for a longlining, and so then that got to be something like 5,000 boats.

Ray: [35:37] It was7, 000 boats.

Eric: [35:38] It was...so, so then it got down to where they said, "OK, we have to do away with this eight day limit." I think that was in about 1975 or 1976, and they started saying, "OK, you can have 15 days to go out and catch the fish. It's open May 1st."

[35:57] And then if there's still some quota left, you get another trip. So they had to manage it a little more carefully that way. So they'd make sure we didn't go over. So they'd give us 15 days, and I remember that. It was '76 and everybody was saying, "Yeah!" We only got a 15 day trip, we're going to have to really get on them, you know, to load up, because nobody was coming at 15 days even longer than a, 50, 000 pound trip was huge.

[36:19] Anyway, so for a couple of years, we did that. You'd get maybe two or three 15 day trips, and then it'd be closed, because there was getting to be a lot of boats getting into it. And then guys started catching the fish in the, that was the main area. So the main area is right out in the Gulf of Alaska. 3A, we call it. 2C, 3A, maybe 3B.

[36:45] Not many boats would go out to the Bering Sea, because they didn't have to. But then, about May, June, 3A was closed for the season. So then boats started going out to the Bering Sea, because that'd still be open. So then we'd, we started doing that, so you'd get maybe three or four trips in different areas, and then they started getting shorter and shorter.

[37:05] Then by about the late '80s, we were down to one day. One day season. Actually, it was probably earlier than that. Well mid, it went pretty fast. We got down to two day openings, and then one day openings, and there were even some 12‑hour openings that I remember.

[37:19] So then I was to the point where we either, everybody was out there fishing all at once, with all of the fish coming in at once, all the fish going into the cold storage and getting put on the cold storage floor, and waiting three or four days to unload. And we didn't have any place to, you know, it was just a mess, and all of the boats out in the grounds at the same time.

[37:41] So they started talking about, "We have to do something about this" because we were down to such short openings. And then that's, in the salmon fishery, they put in a limit in it for that reason, back in the early '70s. So they started talking about this, way back in 1979.

[38:02] Just years and years of going through the political process of, we had to limit the number of boats or, and then we tried to do that. And our boat, there was a lot of talk about it. Then it was either, we, they didn't want to do that because too many boats would be cut out.

So they decided to go with the IFQ fishery, where they took a certain number of years, and in the '80s, I think it was 1984 to 1990? And they took the best five out of seven years, and if you happened to be fortunate enough to be fishing at that time at and doing well, then you qualified.

[38:39] So anybody who caught some fish did get, did qualify. And then they went to that system in '95 finally. And then that is the way it's been since '95. And each boat has a quota, and they're allowed to go out whenever they want between March 15, usually March 15 and catch their quota, so there's fishing out there.

Ray: [39:03] I think it was '92.

Eric: [39:05] Well that's when it passed, but we didn't start, the program didn't really start. We didn't start fishing under that until '95.

Ray: [39:12] OK.

Gordon: [39:12] Will that quota go up?

Eric: [39:14] It goes up and down. The quotas are still managed the same way they used to be, the overall quota.

Gordon: [39:19] The overall quota based upon what the analysis says.

Eric: [39:21] Yeah, all the analysis. So basically what each boat gets is a percentage of what the quota is. So if the quota goes up, your pounds go up, if the quota goes down, your pounds go down.

Gordon: [39:33] But going back to the time when we had a one‑day season, could, could anybody make a living?

Ray: [39:38] Well you caught, most of them caught quite a bit of fish in that one day. But it was very difficult because all, all the boats were out at once. It isn't like now. You go, nobody even, they fish and they don't even see a boat, hardly. But then you'd have maybe 10 or 15 boats around you, wherever, just when you went to all the hotspots, you know?

[40:01] So it was difficult, but the fishing was really good.

Eric: [40:04] Yeah, but if you missed them, then that was up to you...

Ray: [40:06] Yeah, yeah sometimes you missed them.

Eric: [40:07] It means you're part of your anchor for that year if you had a breakdown, so it's kind of nerve‑wracking to rely on a lot only a season, you know.

Ray: [40:15] Yeah, I missed a trip, when my engine, wouldn't work right. I had to get repairs on it, but it was right during the time when they opened up for a one day season. You know, so I missed it?

Gordon: [40:28] You missed the whole thing?

Ray: [40:29] The whole, yeah, the one day season, right. [laughs] Anyway, yeah. Then, what with me with the Leviathan, the boys were fishing with me in the summertime when they were in high school and everything, and then they stayed afterward.

Gordon: [40:47] Let me just ask you, well how big of a crew did you have on this Leviathan, did you have? How many?

Ray: [40:52] We had five.

Gordon: [40:55] Five.

Ray: [40:55] Yeah. It was six for a while, but, and then they were, I had four sons, they were all with me in the summertime. Not all the time, because some of them were younger, but then Eric was with me most of the time.

[41:11] But then I bought another, David was with he wanted to get his own boat, so I sold him the Leviathan. And then I bought the St. John Second. That's still in the family. It's now, I have two of my two youngest sons have that. Jim and Gary. The Leviathan was sold to Dave and that sunk. He lost that here coming home from a trip. So then I retired in 1992, sixty‑five, and I haven't been out since.

Gordon: [42:03] So all your sons followed you into fishing here?

Ray: [42:05] Yes.

Gordon: [42:06] You're still in it?

Ray: [42:07] Yes.

Eric: [42:07] Yeah, well...

Gordon: [42:08] That was...

Eric: [42:10] Well, I still, do you want me to tell how I ended up...

Ray: [42:12] Go ahead.

Gordon: [42:13] Yeah, yeah.

Eric: [42:13] Well I started when I was sophomore in high school. I already told you that my dad went, I want to Ballard High School, yeah, so my story isn't quite, [chuckles] it's pretty much right here, in Ballard. I went to this school at Webster, but I was a sophomore in Ballard High School.

[42:29] And my dad, I remember him, all his life, talking about, "I've got to get a boat. I really want to get boat, but I can't really afford it yet. Now we have, I have six kids, and need to..." and he wanted to get a boat.

[42:40] But he was on the Lorelei 2nd, with a guy named Elmer Martins, who's from Petersburg, also. And he had a son on there, who was a greenhorn. We called green, in breakers, greenhorns. And he was going to go, and my Dad asked me about it, though he didn't really ask me, he said, "You're going fishing with us." Guy, pretty much.

[43:01] And so I said, "OK." And so, we went up and made a trip. Actually the boat had run down to Seattle. I got up and sold the trip before I got on it in Seattle, went, and so there's inbr‑, greenhorns, me and the skipper's son.

[43:16] And we went up to Alaska and made an 18 day trip, and they talked the whole trip about, "Well, this is pretty good fishing, you know, we're doing pretty good. And, you know, if we stay out for eight, for long enough, we can sell up here, because the price has gone up in Kodiak. We don't have to run this one down" this is a real new thing for them. And we're going to Kodiak.

[43:32] So we stayed out 18 days, which is the longest trip we'd ever made, and came into Kodiak. And sold there for 39 cents a pound, I remember that, and we were loaded. 74, 000, so I think it was the biggest trip we'd ever had. So, I got in on the big prize, the big trip, and everybody was happy about it. And so it was like, I thought, "Oh, this is pretty cool."

[43:52] But I was sick for the first nine days of the trip, I was just, be back there baiting gear. That's all I did, was bait. And a lot of snarls, that we had, you know, but, and then throw it up over the side, and then go in, and finally, I got over it after nine days.

[44:07] And, but, anyway. So, I went fishing on the Lorelei that year, the Lorelei 2nd. And then, Dad went and bought the boat that he told you about, the Leviathan.

[44:16] And then, I was still in school, so. And I thought I was going to be in school for, until about two, I thought I was going to get maybe a week of summer vacation, and I was playing baseball and everything. And I got a call, no, my Mom came into the bedroom one morning, with a week left in my junior year in high school, and says, "Well, they can't, Dad can't find one of his crew members. And so, you need to get up to Kodiak."

[44:42] So, I went up to Kodiak. Do you remember that? It was some... it was one of those deals.

[44:48] And so I got on the boat in Kodiak and spent the, that summer, fishing with, on the Leviathan. And then I fished with Dad when I was, I was the oldest son. So, I fished, I was 15 when I started, and I fished with Dad for, I think, 11 years.

[45:05] And then I went, I went on another boat, the Quest for one year, because I just wanted to do something, just different. I'd been with my Dad the whole time I was. And so I went with, on the Quest.

[45:16] And then, the next year, Elmer, who I knew from fishing with him on the Lorelei, decided he was going to retire. He was 67. And so, I called him, and said, "Could I run your boat for you?" And I was 28 at the time, I believe, 27 or 28.

[45:34] And he said, "Yeah, sure. And come down and show you stuff." And so I went down and, I ran the Lorelei for three years, and then I started, and then I bought it in 1985. So I was, and then I, I still have it.

Gordon: [45:49] You have the Lorelei? OK. Lorelei 2?

Ray: [45:50] Yeah. [45:52] Yeah, that's the one.

Gordon: [45:55] Well, describe a typical day out on the, fishing, so people will know.

Ray: [46:02] OK.

Gordon: [46:03] So people will know 50 years from now, what it was like.

Ray: [46:05] You get up in the morning at about.

Gordon: [46:07] Wow.

Ray: [46:08] I mean, I usually try, we'd try to get up a little before daylight, which would be, a lot of times, 4:00, 4:30 in the morning. So you could get started, you know, and fish most of your day, during the daylight, if you could, because there is a lot of daylight up in Alaska during that time.

[46:25] And everybody would be, get up, have a cup of coffee, and it wouldn't take very long, maybe 10 minutes, 15 minutes, get a cup of coffee. You, the skipper would be up looking at the electronics, figuring out where the, getting up to the gear. I went up to the first set of gear that we are going to haul that day. And we, and then we start hauling the gear back.

[46:49] And, nor, longline boat, there's a, the way most of them do it, and I know this is the way we did it, and everybody has their own different styles. But, you have to bait, we had to bait every hook, and we'd generally haul about 15, 000 hooks a day for, this is late, this is more recently, when we fished with black cod gear.

[47:15] And so there's a lot of the work involved baiting, and that's, you have, people have to get really fast at that, because you have to bait so many hooks. And there's a lot of other things to do as well.

[47:27] But, so, there's always two or three guys, on most boats, there's, I know that on your Dad's boat it was a little different with the snap on gear, but for most boats with the conventional style gear, a lot of baiting.

And then one person would be, we have a hydraulic winch. We called it a Gertie, and that's how the gear gets hauled in. One person's over there, coiling the gear and laying the hooks in what we call a skate [47:38] 53] gear, which is about 150 hooks.

So, anyway, one person would coil, like [indecipherable 47: [47:56] 59] gear, and then bring it back and start baiting it. And then someone else would take that person's place. So there's a lot of coiling and baiting, coiling and baiting.

[48:06] And then, every fish has to be cleaned. And there has to be a person at the roller, hooks up to the side of the boat, steering the boat, trying to, you know, following the gear. Gaffing the fish, clearing the ganion, which is the line that goes from the groundline to the hook. Doing whatever you need to do about the roller, but mainly hauling in the fish.

[48:28] And then, one person's standing over near a compartment where you throw the fish, and cleaning all the fish. And so, on a longline vessel you're just busy all day long, doing various jobs. Cleaning every fish, cleaning all the hooks, hauling in the gear. But then they also have to be put away in the fish hold, which is the worst job. One of the worst jobs. And then that, a lot of people would agree with me.

[48:52] You throw the fish down the fish hole, and then you can't do it right away, usually, but later on, when you get a big pile of fish, someone has to go down there. And we usually would take 10 tons of ice, so it would be 10 tons of ice down there, and most holds are, have refrigerated coils running through them to keep things cold.

[49:10] You had to put ice in the cavity of all the fish, and then take the fish and stack them up in these side pens. So that was a tremendously time consuming job and difficult job, but it's important, because that's, you want to come in with a good quality fish.

Eric: [49:25] And so, basically, that would go on for four or five hours, to haul one set of gear.

Ray: [49:32] And then it's time to maybe if the fishing is good, you're going stay in that area to set that set back out. And, that takes about two hours. So, the skipper would when in our sleep, the skippers are on deck because we hadn't deck control to steer the boat. And so, the skipper would run in and set the string of gear if they decide to stay there while the crew stayed out and put ice to fish and hook the bouillon ‑‑ may be cook during that time, and they run in, and eat real fast. And then, by the time all that was done, it's time to go haul the next set and on and on. And, usually we fish 19 hours maybe then sleep five or eighteen and six and sometimes worse, sometimes when we had problems we have to stay up all night but that's basically how it went.

Gordon: [50:24] Now we heard in our last interview with Einar Pedersen talking about, of course, the big factory ships where they do practically everything that there's nothing like that in the halibut industry though, is it?

Ray: [50:36] No.

Gordon: [50:37] Because it...

Ray: [50:38] No. There has been a very little of it. Let's put it that way. Also the soul and the...

Eric: [50:47] There are a few freezer longliners .

Ray: [50:50] Yeah. There are a few.

Eric: [50:50] Yeah, a few but not... it's not something it’s mostly for grey cod. Which is something that we're not involved in. But, they log their longliners. And there are a few guys that freeze black cod. But when we switched over to the... IFQ system. I remember one of the things was to try to keep the fleet very similar to what it was in the past to try keep it family operated in our historical and so they can't. They made it so you can't freeze them. Freeze the halibut that you want just to keep. Keep smaller boats and...

Gordon: [51:30] So how many boats are we talking about overall that have IFQs?

Eric: [51:37] In all, I don't know the exact figure. And I've seen it and I could get that information but I can't tell you exactly.

Gordon: [51:44] But is it in 100s or...

Eric: [51:46] You know it would be more... I don't really want to say it's not absolutely sure.

Gordon: [51:50] No.

Ray: [51:50] But, it's gotten less and less because it got more and more consolidated because some of the guys that only had a little bit of quota there. They are allowed to go there on other boats so they pulled it. So, quite a few of the boats.

Gordon: [52:00] OK.

Eric: [52:01] And there is a cap on how much you can own. They do it... they want to make it so nobody could own too much for percentage of the quota. And so quite a few of the boats have consolidated and gotten up to big like catch on one boat with up to the cap .

Gordon: [52:17] So at some point if you want to get out or retire, you can sell your IFQ, correct?

Ray: [52:21] Uh‑huh.

Eric: [52:22] Yeah.

Ray: [52:22] There's a market for that.

Eric: [52:23] It's like a stock market kind of thing. To me, there is always that you can buy or sell IFQ. There's a lot of rules they don't go into but there's...

Ray: [52:31] They set it up that way. He has grandfathered in the first owners, they don't have to quit when they get older. They don't have to be on a boat.

Gordon: [52:40] OK.

Ray: [52:42] But, the second generation that buy those, they have to be on the boat when they are fishing and then all the time. So, when they get older, they can't go ashore and have someone go out catch fish you see. So, that's the way it’s set up now except for the first ones like Eric here.

[53:04] And yeah, I did have some…I was trying to think of some exciting time. One of them was when I was on the Seattle. It was a big boat packed with a lot of fish but it was very poor fishing I remember. So, they... most of the boats went south. After area three, the closer in areas, they caught in the Bering sea, there was a little handful of boats that went up there later on.

[53:34] And, I got on the Seattle and this one here, we went up there and it was late in the year. All the other areas have closed and everything. You didn't go until you had to go up there. We want to explore it, and they went up to St. Matthew. That was virgin ground. No one did ever fished there before. We lowered the boat in three days, I remember that, it packed a 120, 000 so that was a really nice trip.

[54:03] And then we went back to Sand Point and turned right around and ran back up and did it again. So that was... I mean talking about good fishing that... of course later on when they shortened the season, you were getting fishing just as good as that. But, this was the first time any one had gear up there. That was very exciting.

Gordon: [54:23] So what was the crewman share of that?

Ray: [cough] [54:25] Well, the prices were pretty best. This is 1965... 66. And we had another trip that we came down and sold in Seattle. We ran south. We got 25 cents a pound for it. And I made over 3,000 dollars on that trip which was a lot of money then. I’m trying to think we didn’t… see when we were up there we didn't settle up because we were way up there. And so we didn't do that. And after we got to Seattle…we didn't get home until December eight.

[55:05] Clear from up there. We have to tow another boat down who lost his propellers so it took a long time to come down. But, we settled up…in that year, I've made 17,000 dollars, I remember, for the whole season with those trips up there. So, the price wasn't that big but I probably made 3,000 a trip or maybe 4,000. I don't know with that but it was 17 for the whole season. And, that was a lot of money.

Gordon: [55:29] How was it figured out between the skipper or the owner and...?

Ray: [coughs] [55:34] Well a boat at that time he takes some percentage of around 30 percent. And way back then, it was down to the 20. But, I mean, first of all, the boat takes their share.

Gordon: [55:50] Right.

Ray: [55:51] And then, you get all the expenses for ice, bait, food, and the repair of the gear and all of that. And then, you deduct that and then you split everything up equally.

Gordon: [56:04] OK.

Ray: [coughs] [56:05]

Gordon: [56:07] So the 30 percent, would that the overhead cost of the boat come out of that?

Ray: [56:11] That's the boat share that he get that for keeping the boat up and whatever.

Eric: [56:20] And then, that the owner would also usually get once we got to dividing up the man's shares, the owner would get a man share too.

Gordon: [56:28] Get a man share.

Ray: [56:29] Yeah. You're one of the men anyway.

Gordon: [56:32] Any close calls you had on any trips weatherwise or things like that?

Eric: The freighter.

Ray: [56:40] Oh, yeah.

Eric: [laughs] [56:42] Half plus there.

Ray: [56:44] Yeah, that was something. I...

Gordon: [56:47] Before you start let me switch the tape over. And then we will...

Part 2 of 2

Gordon: OK.

Ray Olsen: [0:18] When I had my boat, most of the boats would go out to the Bering Sea or stay up there, but I would fish area three usually. And I would come down and fish black cod off the coast of Washington and Oregon. [0:32] And this was one of those years and it was pretty late in the year, too, it was in October we were making this trip. I was down and I had a day's run to get back to Seattle. But it was night time when we finished.

[0:51] And it was a beautiful night, clear skies, the moon was out. And this fellow was steering. And gosh, all of a sudden I heard a bang, bang, bang. I figured, God, we can't have run on the rocks out here. And I was getting my pants on and trying to go out and get outside and look.

[1:05] And here we were, had hit this ship. And we were spinning us around and knocked the stabilizers off. And just smashed in, the front end of the boat was really smashed in.

[1:18] But then we called and we didn't get no answer. Finally I figured, last guy I told everybody "Come on up and grab your survival suits."

[1:32] And they came up and they said "Well, there's no water down there." And then the engine was working and everything like that. But it was really a mess.

[1:53] But anyway, we went in to Seattle and then they had these hearings. We had to go to the Coast Guard. See what happened, we explained it to them. But then about six months later they found this ship down there that had this paint on the side of their ship and everything like that.

[2:03] So, they went and they asked the skipper. And he says "Yes" he remembers doing it, he says. But they didn't really know what it was or something like that.

Gordon: [2:05] It was kind of a hit and run then, as you see it?

Ray: [2:07] Yes.

Gordon: [2:08] Oh my God.

Ray: [2:25] So, anyway they had to pay for ‑ well, I had to pay part of it because you're at fault just for being there, you know, partially to blame. [laughs] But anyway, they had these questionnaires. And my boat, we worked on it all winter to get it fixed. [2:38] Then anyway, they kept questioning us, the guy that was on the duty, about ‑ what was his name?

Gordon: [2:39] Scott Hanson.

Ray: [2:56] Scott Hanson. So he was explaining all the time. He got confused, he says, and he switched course at the last minute and it was his fault, actually. So anyway, they settled the whole case. [3:21] And then years later this Scott Hanson was on another boat, the Carole M, and there was two skippers. And one of them come up and it was after they were through and this Scott Hanson was up steering, And he smelled marijuana, or whatever it was.

[3:31] And he said "I'll bet you that's what happened with Ray." So, I don't know. So that's what happened. [laughs] He might have been on drugs. [laughter]

Gordon: [3:34] Wouldn't be the first time, right?

Ray: [3:35] Yes.

Gordon: [3:44] You mentioned your grandmother being a successful boardinghouse owner. Could you tell us some stories about her, or what you know?

Ray: [3:59] Yes, after she left Petersburg and moved up there she worked in the Bergman Hotel as a cook and everything like that, getting her act together. And then finally they had this ... it was pretty close to downtown ‑ it was a boardinghouse, but they retired. [4:15] So she bought it from them and then took it over. And at that time, they had the AJ Mine, a lot of miners in Juneau. Most of the tenants worked in the mine, or they worked around town.

[4:28] Then she cooked, but boy she worked awful hard. But she made a lot of money, too. Well, not a lot, but I mean she also bought another house and had money in the bank. [laughs]

Gordon: [4:31] Well, she got a little bit of the American dream then when she came here.

Ray: [4:33] That's right she did. She was happy. Yeah, right.

Gordon: [4:47] What about your Nordic Norwegian tradition. Did anything survive the trip here? Did you guys continue with any special tradition that you can identify as...?

Ray: [5:13] I went to live with my dad and I did when I was in... But my mother, she didn't marry a Norwegian. She married someone else so I wasn't really raised in a Nordic tradition then until when I got my own boat. When I went to... I mean, when I moved and stayed with my dad when I was in high school, and they went to church along with the Sons of Norway.

Gordon: [5:17] So did you get to eat lutefisk? Did you do all that?

Ray: [5:19] Oh yeah, we had lutefisk, yeah right with my dad. Yeah.

Gordon: [5:21] Yeah.

Ray: [5:22] All the time, yeah.

Gordon: [5:24] Have you tried it?

Eric: [5:39] Well, I've tried it yeah, but I don't necessarily like it. But my wife's grandma came over from Norway too so she learned all the cookie traditions. So she makes lefse and all the krumkake.

Gordon: [5:40] Your wife cooks?

Ray: [5:54] Yes. And things like that because she learned how to do it from her grandma, so we've had quite a bit of that around our house too. But mom, my mom didn't come over. She wasn't from Norway. She's English so she had other traditions other than Norwegian.

Georgia: [6:01] You mentioned your four sons, but didn't you have a daughter who fished with you?

Ray: [6:02] Yeah. Christine.

Georgia: [6:05] How long a timeframe was that?

Ray: [6:10] She would be nine years. [laughs] That's what she tells me.

Eric Olsen: [6:15] Yeah, I think it was about nine years and mostly in the summer wasn't it? She was going to school too.

Ray: [6:40] She worked in Petersburg in a cannery up there. She got on to cold storage because she made more money than in the cannery. But then she wanted to try something else so she went up to Seward, because Icicle owned that. She got a job with them but she wasn't making anything. She'd been up there a month and I think she'd only worked like six hours. [7:18] Anyway, we came in and sold a trip in Seward, and the cook had quit. So she was down bugging me. She wanted to go. So I called up Alice, my wife and she says, "No way she can take her out there." Anyway, I hung up and then she put so much pressure on me coming down here, you got to take me and all that. So we took her on. She cooked and then next year she cooked and then she baked. That's about all she could really do; cook and bake.

[7:51] With a cook in the old days, a lot of the cooks it's easier if you go to cook than it is if you're the guy that has to go down and ice the fish and do the air, all the heavy stuff. So usually a lot of older guys would take that job on so they could fish longer. So they could get away from the heavy lifting and all that, and they didn't dress fish. But nowadays they do. The cook has to do everything now. But it was different years ago.

Eric: [8:12] There was a time during the mid '70s some trips, quite a few trips it was all... Three of them, three of us boys, my younger brother wasn't fishing yet. He is now, and Christine and dad. There were certain times when it was a five man boat and it was all family.

Ray: [8:13] All family.

Eric: [8:21] Which I often think it would be really difficult for you. But for mom, man that would be...Everybody would be at home, but your whole family on one boat.

Eric: [8:23] I don't know if I'd want to do it.

Gordon: [8:28] Is that uncommon?

Eric: [8:40] It's not uncommon to have family on boats. Most of the jobs, that's how a lot of the jobs come about. But I think it's fairly uncommon to have an entire family on one boat.

Gordon: [8:49] Are there still a lot of second, third generation Norwegians like your family that are Nordics that are fishing or into halibut particularly?

Ray: [8:51] No. They are...

Eric: [9:25] When I first started, that was the beginning of the end of the Norwegian crewman era. I mean when I started in 69, when I first started fishing on 70 on the Leviathan there, there was a 70 year old Norwegian, a 67 year old Norwegian and a 66 year old Norwegian that actually came over from the old country. There's was quite a few guys in the fleet around that age. And that basically made up all the deckhands in the fleet. For a long time I think it was guys that came over from Norway but they were getting old. [9:58] And when I first started running my boat I had a fellow by the name of Uncle Beaunis who had come over from Norway and he was one of the younger ones. So he fished with me for several years in the 80's and then he retired. But he was one of the last crewmen that was Norwegian. There were a few more. But then all those guys started retiring. A whole bunch of young guys like myself in our 20's and sons and nephews and all kinds of people that came over from the east coast looking for jobs.

[10:12] Got into the fishing industry. There's a whole bunch of guys in the fishery that took the place of old Norwegians that were in their 20's. And now all of us are getting in their 50's and 60's. So there's going to be another turnover coming pretty soon.

Gordon: [10:15] What about your family? Is there somebody coming up in your family?

Eric: [10:48] Well, I have a daughter and a son. And my son has gone fishing a little bit. But he went off to college and he always had jobs in bike shops. We, and we didn't, we wanted him to go to school and get an education before he fell back on fishing it you know. And he did. He's been working another job at Whole Foods. But he's going to, I haven't even told you this, he's going to, he's going fishing next year. He's 27 now and he wants to start going fishing. And my daughter is not fishing. She isn't....

Gordon: [10:50] What's the attraction? What do you think the attraction is?

Eric: [11:22] Well I think a lot of it is, for me, you get a lot of time off, you know, in the wintertime. And also, it's kind of, it's a tangible thing. You know, you go out and you try to load the boat. And if you do it's really cool. You come in you sell the fish. You've got a boatload of fish. You've done it, you've worked hard. And you can say we have 65, 000 pounds of halibut. And you feel, it's a real challenge to do it. [11:40] And I think in a lot of jobs, your working real hard, you know, in that job as well buy maybe you don't see the results. And people can't you know, I like that part of it. And the adventure of it. There's a lot of hardship with it too but it's not so great for families all the time. But as far as ...

Gordon: [11:42] Do you love the sea?

Eric: [12:14] I hated it the first trip, I'll tell ya that, but I was sick. When you're seasick it's no fun. But I got over that for the most part. And you know, a lot of people will say they love the sea when it's really rough and everything. But that's pretty miserable actually and most of the them really don't like it. But I've fished when it's, when you have to be fishing. When it's blowing 40. But we like it when it's nice weather and your catching lots of fish, then we love it. It can be terribly miserable at times. [12:29] But then a lot of times, there's been a few times that I've gone out there that I've thought OK. Especially when I first started I'm like, I'm never going to go out here again. But then once you get in and you've sold it you tend to think, "Oh, that wasn't so bad, I'll go back out there."

Georgia: [12:32] And you've stuck with it. Even when you talk about 12 cents and seven cents.

Ray: [13:06] Yeah. I did. Because they weren't making much money, you know, back in that time anybody was. If you…I don't know if the average wage per year was five thousand or something like that you know. So, if you, I could go fishing and have a good year I could make seven or eight thousand. That was quite a bit more than the average wage you know. But then if you add the boat and had the boat paid for. That was the whole thing at Petersburg. People that, all the boat owners would go south, they could afford to, you know, in the wintertime. [13:22] But the guy that works on deck, he's got a family. You can't afford to do that, so you're stuck right there for the whole generations almost. If you don't have a boat where you can make a little extra money to live a little better, you got to have that.

Eric: [13:44] It's important to have good shipmates. I mean, that makes a big difference too. You know, if you have a bunch of guys that work well together because your spending an awful lot of time with them on a close spaces. Close spaces, you know most of the crew sleeps together in one boat's hull and you're with them all day long every day.

[13:51] So if you have good shipmates that get along really well that makes it a lot better and there's a lot of camaraderie involved in that also.

Gordon: [13:55] So you keep the boat at Fisherman's Terminal?

Eric: [13:58] My boat's down at Fisherman's Terminal right now. Yeah. [crosstalk]

Gordon: [14:08] What do you have to say about that? The Terminal, has it changed over the years, how important it is to the fishing fleet?

Eric: [14:09] The Terminal?

Gordon: [14:10] Yeah.

Eric: [14:28] Well, it's important to the fishing fleet because we have to have a place to moor our boats. But it's also got the Fishing Vessel Marine Ways right there where most of the boats get hauled out and get all their work done. Other than that I don't know what else to say about how important it is. It's something we definitely need. [14:54] It has changed quite a bit down there because some fisheries haven't been doing so well over the years so there's less boats. So all of their moorage spaces aren't taken up. So they've allowed pleasure boaters in there. Some fishermen don't like that, but to me, it doesn't bother me at all because I figure if the spaces are empty why not let someone use them and take in money for them?

Gordon: [14:56] It was a big controversy.

Eric: [14:58] I know.

Gordon: [15:06] I know we would have a public meeting here at the museum. But you think that the Port has handled it well...? [crosstalk]

Eric: [15:17] I don't have any problem with that myself and I haven't been that closely involved with it, but I read the articles and I read about the fishermen that are against it and I can understand their point of view. But I think it's OK. [crosstalk]

Gordon: [15:19] Yeah.

Eric: [15:31] They've done a good job and they've made a lot of improvements down there. They've got these ongoing projects going on. So it's a very safe, good place to moor your boat.

Georgia: [15:37] In the family now, how many boats are you guys involved owning?

Eric: [15:45] Well, it's not really owned all by the family.

Ray: [15:46] No. It's not by the family. Yeah.

Eric: [15:54] I just went off on my own. Basically I have a boat. It's nothing to do with the rest of the family. We do the same thing.

Ray: [15:56] I don't have a boat.

Eric: [16:34] Then dad had a boat, but two of my brothers, Jim and Gary, took over the Saint John when dad retired, which was dad's boat. He sold it to them. Then my other brother Dave, who started running the Leviathan for my dad back about when I got the Lorelei, right around that same time, early '80s, the Leviathan sunk. Then he went partners with another person in the fleet, Paul Clampett, and bought a boat called the Augustine. So Dave is part owner of the Augustine with Paul.

Ray: [16:35] It's a big boat. [crosstalk]

Eric: [16:52] So they have their own separate boat. Dave and Jim and Gary have the Saint John, which was my dad's boat. I went and ran the Lorelei and bought the Lorelei in the early '80s. So there's three of us that have boats.

Gordon: [16:57] Have you ever visited where your dad came from, Norway?

Ray: [17:08] Actually, I was there, but I was on a ... I signed up through the museum here. They had a trip you could go on.

Gordon: [17:09] Yeah.

Ray: [17:40] I went back to that and then we went up to Kirkenes and took the boat down to Bergen, then across back to Oslo. But we stopped in Molde, but just for a short time. I didn't have [indecipherable 17:37] . Also in Aalesund but it wasn't enough time to...

Gordon: [17:42] Was John Hendricks on that trip with you?

Ray: [17:44] Yes. [laughs] Yeah. That's right.

Eric: [17:45] The electrician?

Gordon: [17:46] Yes.

Eric: [17:51] Really? Yeah. Great guy. He used to do all the work for all the [indecipherable 17:54] boats.

Eric: [17:53] My dad's boat too, yeah.

Ray: [17:54] Oh really?

Gordon: [17:59] He lives down on Leary in that new place. I don't know what they call it.

Ray: [18:01] Oh, oh, yeah, yeah.

Gordon: [18:06] He has one of those electric motor scooters. He rides up and down 24th.

Ray: [18:07] John Hendricks?

Eric: [18:08] Yeah.

Ray: [18:08] Oh, ha.

Gordon: [18:11] Yeah. He's still going strong.

Ray: [18:12] Wow. That's something.

Eric: [18:13] Good for him.

Man 3: [18:14] Yeah.

Gordon: [18:17] Well that's great. Anything else? [18:20] Great. Very good.